It can get you to stop doing things in an instant, it can get you to do something you have been putting off for months, It can change your outlook, it can change your plans, and for how motivating it can be, it only has four letters: PAIN.

You pop some pills, put a pain patch on, try to work it out and last resort you go to see the Chiropractor, because you just can’t take it anymore. Then once your pain is gone you vanish with it and your chiropractor doesn’t see you again until the great motivator rears its ugly head once more.

While pain is often thought of as simply a reaction to physical injury, it goes much deeper than this. Pain perception is tied to areas in our brain that function for learning, attention, behavior, decision making, and expectation. Because of this each persons perception of pain is very different. This is why you could hit one person and they would not even flinch, but hit someone else with the same force and velocity and they could experience severe pain. Pain has a large psychological tie.

When injury does occur it is often true that pain is the last thing to come and the first thing to leave. A lack of pain does not equal a state of health. Pain does serve a purpose, it keeps us from injuring ourselves any further, but it should not be what we base our level of health on.

Therefore, if we can be functioning at a suboptimal level and not have pain; shouldn’t we think about changing our motivation. Our goal should be an optimal level of health, not merely a pain free existence. The only way to know if your nervous system is functioning at its peak level is to have it checked regularly. So don’t just stop by your chiropractor’s office when you are in pain, try stopping in before you get to that point and discover the quality of life you could be enjoying!